Sandra Harding has for over a decade led the way in connecting philosophy of science with social and political concerns, especially those concerning Western and 'non-Western' cultures. Sciences From Below is her most ambitious statement yet of her philosophically and politically charged 'postcolonial science and technology studies', which seeks to expose and overcome the complicity of science in the subjugation of women and non-Western cultures. It is a bold project and this book demonstrates both its complexities and its considerable potential.

Drawing upon contemporary literature in the history and philosophy of science, Harding argues that the alleged 'objectivity' of the sciences has for too long disguised its parochialism and 'Eurocentrism' and allowed it to provide intellectual legitimacy to projects of Western cultural and intellectual imperialism. To this end, she focuses on the exclusion of 'peoples at the peripheries of modernity', namely women and the peoples of non-Western cultures, exposing the marginalization of their values and perceptions, and calls for 'realistic reassessments of both Western and non-Western knowledge systems and the social worlds' they are embedded within (pp.5-6). The result is an ambitious and persuasive call for philosophers of science to take seriously, and engage with, social justice projects and political policymaking. This need not entail an abandonment of traditional philosophical concerns with, say, the role of values in science or the foundations of scientific knowledge, since, as Harding emphasizes, these all pertain to the authority of the sciences: her 'postcolonial' focus simply takes these familiar topics of philosophy of sciences and extends them into the social and political sphere.

Harding's guiding complaint is that science presents itself as 'appropriat[ing] ... merely technical matters that are actually social and political ones', and as such wields a considerable yet invisible 'anti-democratic' influence over policy-making. This is particularly problematic given the enormous authority of scientific knowledge and its power to affect 'which groups will flourish and which will lead nasty and short lives' (pp.25). These 'flourishing' groups are, she charges, invariably 'white, Northern, bourgeois' men (p.27) whilst those marginalized groups are those who suffer not only racial and ethnic discrimination, social and political exclusion, and economic deprivation, but also find themselves epistemologically devalued at the hands of Western sciences that presume their own universality.

The first part of the book, 'Problems with Modernity's Science and Politics', see Harding intriguingly beginning her criticisms of the nefarious 'neo-colonial' power of Western science by focusing on one of the groups closest to it: contemporary science studies scholars. Philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science have, she charges, not only failed to take seriously these political problems but have assumed complicity in them by pursuing academic researches that buy into and, worse, affirm the authority of Western science and culture over its indigenous alternatives. The scholars she takes particular issue with are the philosopher of science Bruno Latour (chapter one), and the sociologists Ulrich Beck (chapter two), Michael Gibbons, Helga Nowotny, and Peter Scott (chapter three). She praises each of them for being 'optimistic about the possibilities' of changing science and politics but criticizes the 'severe though illuminating limitations' in their accounts of Western modernity, especially in their failure to incorporate 'the insights of feminism [and] postcolonialism' (p.18). Anyone seeking detailed critical discussions of these five eminent scholars should read these chapters, as should anyone keen to appreciate the 'feminist-postcolonial' approach that Harding is articulating.

It may seem at times that Harding lapses into proselytizing on behalf of her feminist and postcolonial agenda, chastising scholars for failing to ingest the ample literature from these fields (and indeed the ample bibliography alone makes buying Sciences In Below worth it.) However, this is unfair, since Harding's decision to begin the book with these long critical studies is surely intended to give science studies scholars unfamiliar with feminist and postcolonial science studies a way into the subject. After all, whilst feminist philosophy of science is by now familiar enough to philosophers, its postcolonial sister assuredly is not. The second and third parts of the book then make good her promise to explore the 'contributions from many participants ... at the periphery of modernity' (p.101), mainly Western and non-Western women and the peoples of non-European cultures, who have 'borne most of the costs and received fewest of the benefits of Northern sciences and technologies' (p.134). In so doing, Harding issues a stark corrective to, firstly, over-optimistic hope that science has at least largely abandoned its gender prejudices and, secondly, the pervasive presumption that Western science and technology is universally and uncontroversially beneficial to non-Western peoples.

Sciences From Below has many targets and many objectives. It seeks to prompt mainstream philosophers of science into taking seriously social and political issues, especially those raised by feminist and postcolonial critics; it offers possibilities for future engagements between philosophy of science and political policymaking; it challenges dominant received views about the universality and beneficence of Western science and technology; and it provides a workable agenda for future studies in postcolonial science and technology studies. It also exhibits enormous scholarship, enough to entice and sustain interest from philosophers, sociologists, historians, and political theorists. One might also add that one admirable feature of Sciences From Below is that Harding does not linger in extended critical polemics--against science as a 'man's game', or in crass denunciations of 'the wicked West'--but instead offers a nuanced perspective, at times stirring, at times pessimistic, of the possible future compatibilities of global sciences and cultures. Such a vision, she says, 'can and must be a desire, a dream, and a vision long before it becomes a reality' (p.16), and it is a great virtue of Sciences From Below that it surely represents one step towards realizing this reality.

Ian James Kidd is a final-year doctoral postgraduate at the Department of Philosophy, Durham University, and is currently researching the later philosophy of Paul Feyerabend. His research interests include contemporary political and postcolonial philosophies of sciences, philosophical anthropology, and the history of European science, culture, and colonialism. Contact: [email protected]. Web: www.dur.ac.uk/i.j.kidd.

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